Green-Red Alliance

[Dialectic]

In OctaVenti's post on "The New Anti-Semitism," there is an excellent example of what Integral refers to as the Green-Red alliance:

http://www.thefighting44s.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?t=7539

In addition, Israel is no longer weak but proud and ready to defend itself. So when its terrorist enemies like Hezbollah and Hamas brilliantly married their own fascist creed with popular leftwing multiculturalism in the West, there was an eerie union: yet another supposed third-world victim of a Western oppressor thinking it could earn a pass for its murderous agenda.

This alliance of consciousness structures, multiculturalism married with tribalism and feudalism, occurs all over Western nations both between people and within people.

Note, for example, the dynamic of anti-globalization protests: there are the anti-corporate pacifists as well as punks who just want to tear shit up. You might say that in this case they're not truly "allied" but these types of thinking and behaviour tend to occur together. This is how you get terrorists and feudal lords using multiculturalist language, and how you get academics and all sorts of liberals sounding dangerously sympathetic to mass murderers.

Wilber goes into it briefly here:

http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/boomeritis/endnotes/ch10.cfm/

"So, when we say 'Boomers were the first green generation,' we simply mean that, compared with the previous generations, a significantly larger percentage of Boomers--perhaps up to 30% or 40% of them-- reached the green wave as their general center of gravity. 'Center of gravity' for an individual means that the proximate self-sense is basically identified with that level (although many other developmental lines might be at other levels). Thus, for example, the stereotypical Boomer that we are discussing in this seminar has a cognitive line of development that is at yellow; a self-sense whose center of gravity is green; numerous subpersonalities at red and purple; and an internal recoil against, or repression of, one's own blue and orange (which means that the subpersonalities at blue and orange are internally alienated and therefore projected onto others where they are aggressively attacked). That psychograph is quite typical of boomeritis--a green alliance with red/purple in hatred of blue/orange, and all the interior grandiosity and outward rebellion that would ensue--as we have often discussed in this seminar series. (This does not rule out subsequent psychological dynamics: e.g., once boomeritis has alienated its own healthy blue, it often compensates by reactivating a morbidly rigid blue system--we saw this with the Green Inquisitors. But all of that is subsequent to the basic psychograph of the GREEN/red pathology.)

[poisenedrice]

Interesting, but I'm confused about something. If each level of cognitive development transcends the previous levels, how would someone at the green level, for example, have beliefs and behaviors that would be expected of someone at the red level? From my POV, it seems that a person at a certain cognitive level of development could see the futility and stupidity of actions manifested from a lower level (ie smashing shit up if you're a tree hugging hippie) and would be less inclined to participate in such behavior.

Or was Wilber saying a person could have "streaks" of different cognitive levels for certain aspects of his/her personality?

[Dialectic]

Good question. Saying someone is "green" or "red" or "level 2" or "level 6" is a gross simplification.

There are multiple LINES of development; some important ones include cognitive (your ability to reason and see multiple perspectives), moral, interpersonal, emotional, psychosexual, and physical.

You can, for example, be cognitive level 7 (have the ability to analyze your own analysis, see and intuit complex interconnections), moral level 5 (believe in the morality of power, efficiency, money, political and economic systems, and see no real meaning beyond that), emotional level 3 (be extremely power-driven, defensive/ aggressive, and manipulative in your emotions), etc.

The special thing about being moral level 6, or "green," is that because its very nature is pluralistic and egalitarian, if it wants to, it can choose to regress, strongly reactivate, or otherwise justify "lower" forms of behaviour, using terms like "culturally relative," "oppressed," "exploitative capitalist," "patriarchal," "colonial," etc. Essentially, you or your ally can act like a total asshole and you can use sophisticated reasoning and morality to justify it.

Remember, when you "transcend" something, you include it into your own structure. It doesn't mean you dissociate from it or oppress it. I can relate to "lower" needs, feelings, and thoughts, and can acknowledge and activate them at will. In fact, without the "lower" structures, the "higher" structures cannot exist, like if you destroy molecules, you can't have cells.

Does this make sense?

(What I have just described, with the levels and lines, incidentally, is what we'd call an integral psychograph. A "typical" psychograph of a not-too-crazy AM on this site might be cognitive 6, moral 5 or 6 (maybe with pathology), interpersonal 4 or 5 (maybe with pathology), emotional 4 or 5 (maybe with pathology), psychosexual 4 or 5 (maybe with pathology), physical 3 or 4 (maybe with pathology). Note, however, that this is not a rigid structure, lines affect each other, we have not even discussed quadrants, states, and types, and no one is always "at" a certain level all the time.)

[evil_FUX]

I've got a couple of quick questions, does this kind of thing happen with people that have their center of gravity in the second tier? And if so, do you have an example?

[Dialectic]

By "this kind of thing," I don't know if you're referring to grossly uneven development or the green-red phenomenon.

If you're talking about a strong "alliance" with red internally (inside yourself, i.e., strong identification with red impulses) or externally, no, it doesn't happen. If one were truly, stably at second tier, one would have a genuine appreciation for the values brought by blue (now called amber, incidentally, because I-I doesn't explicitly use SD anymore) and orange.

If you're talking about having uneven development, then yes, someone truly, stably at second tier would still have different lines at different levels. Now, if there were GROSS unevenness, I believe one's COG could still be second tier (this means that approximately 50% of your thoughts and actions come from second tier, with the other half mostly coming from levels immediately above or below), but one would either have pathologies or high potential for pathologies. If one or two lines are a lot lower than the rest, that will have a skewing affect on the rest of your lines of development. In the case of more "enlightened," or at least intellectual beings, pathology or "stunted" growth tends to occur in psychosexual and interpersonal lines.

I think this occurs quite a bit in AMs, and I'm not exempting myself from that. This is why it's so important to "catch up" those lines when you realize what's happening and are mature enough to do something about it. This would hopefully happen around university age and continue into the professional world.